THE BOOK OF NEGROES (6 page)

“My papa said, fear no man, but come to know him.”

“Fear the toubab.”

“How can he breathe, with a nose so thin? Do those nostrils admit air?”

“Do not look at the toubab.”

“He has many hairs.”

“To look directly at the toubab is a mark of defiance.”

“Chekura! There are even hairs growing from his nostrils.”

“Walk carefully, Aminata.”

“Are you my captor or my brother?”

Chekura shook his head and said no more. I had heard that toubabu were white, but it was not so. This one was not at all the colour of an elephant tooth. He was sand coloured. Darker on the forearms than on the neck. I had never seen wrists so thick boned. He didn’t have much of a backside, and he walked like an elephant.
Thump, thump, thump
. His heels struck the earth with the rudeness of a falling tree. The toubab was not barefoot like the captives, nor in antelope-hide sandals like the captors. Thick shoes rose past his ankles.

The toubab kept a chain about his neck, and at the leather belt around his waist he had an object covered in glass that he often consulted. He shouted and waved his hands angrily at our two lead captors. Under his supervision, the captors promptly brought the women and me back into neck yokes. Fanta was placed directly ahead of me in the coffle. One end of a wooden yoke was fastened around her neck and the other around mine. The yokes were bound fast at the back of our necks, and no amount of tugging could get me free, or accomplish anything other than to rub my skin raw.

While the toubab watched, our captors led three more captives into the coffle. A new woman was brought to us. She too was big with child. She was placed between Fanta and me. It wasn’t a bad change. Fanta
often muttered complaints, which made the days seem long, and the new woman was shorter, closer to my height, so it was easier to walk with my neck attached to hers. That night, when I came to rest under a tree, she lay on her side and I could hear her laboured breathing.

I settled in beside her.

“I ni su,”
I whispered, Good evening. These were my first words to her, in Bamanankan.

“Nse ini su,”
she replied, in Bamanankan.

I asked if she would have her baby soon. Very soon, she told me.

“This is a bad time,” she said. “I wish the child would wait.”

“The child doesn’t know our woes,” I said. “Do you think it will be a boy?”

“Girl. And she doesn’t want to wait.”

“How do you know it’s to be a daughter?”

“Only a petulant little girl would come at such a bad time. Only a girl would defy me. A boy would not defy me. He knows that I would beat him.”

This woman made the time pass. I liked her. “And you would not beat a girl?”

“A girl is too wise. She knows how to avoid a beating.”

“Then why is she defying you now?” I asked.

“You are very clever. What is your name?”

I told her.

“I’m Sanu,” she said.

“Sleep in peace, Sanu,” I said, yawning.

“Yes, girl woman. Sleep in peace.”

In the morning, we were yoked again. Once more, I was placed behind Sanu. She moaned as she walked, and I could tell, by the way her soles slapped the ground, by the way she pushed in her backside to relieve the tension in her lower back, by the way she let her hands ride on her hips
while she walked, that before long, she would have her baby. As the afternoon progressed, she began to slow the coffle.

“She will have her baby soon,” I said to Chekura.

“What do we do about that?”

“I have helped at births. My mother and I bring babies to the light. It is our trade. Our work. Our way of life.”

Sanu spoke. “The child is right. I am ready.”

“There is a village ahead,” Chekura said. “I will have them stop there.”

Chekura moved ahead to the front of the coffle and spoke to his superiors. We settled under a grove of trees. Chekura came back, with an older captor and the toubab, and he released us from our yokes.

I spoke to Chekura only: “The woman and I will settle quietly under that big tree, over there. Leave us alone, but bring me one woman to help. I will need a sharp knife that you have cleaned properly. And water. Go to the village and get three gourds of water, one of which should be warm. And some cloth.”

The toubab held a firestick by his side. He stared at me. He spoke to the older man, who spoke in yet another tongue to the younger man, who in turn spoke to me. “He asks if you know what to do.”

“Yes,” I said. “Bring me the things I need.”

Fanta had turned her back and walked away. Another girl, just a few rain seasons older than I, was sent to help. At least she did what I told her. When the warm water came, she poured water over the knife and cleaned it properly. She arranged for the woman to lie down comfortably, with bundled leaves under her head, and some furs and skins under her body, keeping her off the ground.

Our captors stood and watched. Thinking of my mother and what she would do, I opened my palm wide, and shoved it at them with elbow locked and arm straight. They raised their eyebrows, and the toubab stared at me again. He muttered something to one of the captors, who passed
it on to another captor, who asked me in Bamanankan if I was sure that I knew what I was doing. I gestured once more for them to go, and this time they retreated.

I rubbed Sanu’s shoulders and back with shea butter. “You will be a fine mother,” I said to her, and she smiled gently and told me I would make my mother proud.

Sanu told me about her husband and her two other babies. She described how she had been taken captive while carrying food to the women who were working in the cassava fields, pulling the roots from the ground. With the baby so full inside her, she had chosen not to fight.

I encouraged her to keep breathing steadily, even when the contractions shook her. She dozed off momentarily.

When she awoke, Sanu said, “I am ready now, child. If we live, I will name her Aminata. After you.”

The moon was blazing again, and I could feel heaviness in the air. Dampness. A big wind flailed about like a child in a tantrum, but Sanu was silent and still.

The baby came out head-first, just as it should have, and the rest of the body slid out into the world. I tied the slippery cord off at the belly and hacked through its thickness. The baby started bawling. She had huge, swollen female parts—even this I could see in the moonlight. I got the baby wrapped and warm and up against the mother’s nipple, and then I waited for the afterbirth and helped bring that out. It was the fastest birth I had ever seen. “Aminata, my baby,” Sanu said.

I didn’t know if it was wise to name a child so quickly, or to name it after me. Perhaps it would bring bad luck to name a child after someone in such danger. But Sanu was set on the idea. I was touched to see her gentleness as she turned the baby and brought her close to a nipple.

The tiny Aminata began to suck on her mother with such intensity that
one might think she had already been doing it for months, and Sanu and I touched fingers. Tears sprang from Sanu’s eyes, and that unlocked all the sadness within me. I heaved and shook and cried until my eyes were emptied, and Sanu’s tears rolled steadily down her cheeks as she held still and fed the baby. It was bad luck, I knew, to cry when a baby was born.

In the morning, we were tied again. With cloth that Chekura had brought, Sanu slung the baby low on her back. Blood from her childbirth coursed down her legs as we climbed and descended mountain paths and crossed valleys and forests full of kola-nut traders.

To pass the time, since I was walking directly behind her, I watched the baby Aminata. When her head bounced around too much, I called out to Sanu to tie her up tighter. The baby had little tufts of softly curled hair at the back of her head, and I spent hours imagining how this little girl would someday grow her hair, comb it and braid it. For two days, I lost myself in daydreams while staring at the tiny baby bundled up close against her mother.

On the third day of walking after Aminata’s birth, the coffle slowed at the crest of a hill. Although the morning was still young, the sun was already hot. I took my eyes off the back of Aminata’s head and looked out at the world again.

What I saw seemed impossible.

Over to my right, where the path led, the river flowed fast and wide. It was wider than ten stone throws. At the shore of this angry river waited many canoes, each with eight rowers. I had never seen so many boats and rowers. To my left, the water expanded into eternity. It heaved and roared, lifted and dropped. It was green in some parts, blue in others, forever shifting and sliding and changing colour. It foamed at the mouth like a horse run too hard. To my left, water had taken over the world.

The captors led us to the shore. The toubab shouted directions as the captors released our yokes and shoved us into the middle of the canoes.
It confused me to see them force Chekura into my canoe. The rowers were naked, other than loincloths, and they reeked of salt and sweat and dirt. Their muscles glistened in the sun. The canoes pulled smoothly over the water as the river widened, until I could not make out the details on the distant shore. As we left the land, a captive in the boat next to mine struggled to his feet, bellowed and rocked his canoe. Two huge oarsmen stopped rowing and bashed him mightily with their oars. Still he kept struggling. When the canoe began to pitch, they dropped their oars and quickly threw the captive out into the fast-moving waters. He thrashed and sank and was gone.

We were rowed through the morning. The sunlight reflected off the water and burned my eyes. The river widened so dreadfully that all I could see of the land was that it was mountainous to my left and flat to my right. Chekura sat in the canoe, unbound but among us, and he whispered to me as we travelled.

“You are one of the lucky ones,” he said. “A big boat is waiting, and nearly full. All of you will be sold and will travel across the water in very short time.”

“Lucky?” I asked.

“Others will have been waiting on that ship for moons. Dying, slowly, as it fills. But you will not have to wait.”

A horrid smell wafted along with the breeze. It smelled like rotting food. It smelled like the waste produced by a town of men. I scrunched up my face.

“The smell of the ship,” Chekura said, his voice trembling. “We will soon be parted.”

“Walk gently among your captives, Chekura. One will be sure to have a knife, and be waiting for you to make one false step.”

“And you, Aminata, beware of your own beauty, flowering among strangers.”

The foul-smelling breeze smacked us again. “How could anything flower, or even live, in that kind of stench?” I said.

Chekura’s lip quivered. The boy who had been smiling through three revolutions of the moon was now frowning. I never had a brother, but now he seemed like one.

“Where will they take us now?” I whispered.

“Across the water.”

“I won’t go.”

“You will go or you will die,” he said.

“Then I will return.”

“I have taken many men to the sea,” Chekura said, “but not once have I seen one return to his village.”

“Then I will sleep by day and walk at night. But listen to me, friend. I will come back. And I will come home.”

THE CANOES PULLED UP TO A WHARF by an island, where I saw a castle on a hill. More toubabu and men of the colours of my homeland swarmed about, loading goods and leading people. We were marched up a steep path and behind the building. I noticed that Chekura was still with us. Ahead lay two penned areas, side by side, bordered by sharpened stakes jutting out of the ground to the height of two men. The captors pushed open the gates and shoved the men into one pen, and the women and children into another. I looked back for Chekura, but he was gone. I couldn’t see Fanta either. Perhaps I could find Sanu, with her baby. There they were, twenty steps to my left. I wasn’t bound any more, so I ran over to be with them.

Two toubabu with firesticks guarded my penned area, but men of my homeland also stood ready with clubs, knives and firesticks. Locked inside this pen, naked and sore and bleeding, we stood tight together in sandy soil that stank of urine and feces.

We waited and watched as the sun edged across the sky. They brought us boiled millet and dumped it in a trough. Some of the women picked at it. I couldn’t bring myself to do so, but when we were passed calabashes of water, I did drink.

Women from my own homeland washed us with cold water and rubbed palm oil on our skin, to make us look shiny and healthy. Inside our pen, homelander women who were clothed and cold-eyed dragged one female captive to a corner, where toubabu and homelander men stood waiting with a metal device heating over glowing embers. I looked away, but heard the woman screaming as if someone had torn off her arm.

I vowed not to give them the pleasure of my pain. But when my turn came, I surrendered to their coarseness and their stink. They dragged me to the branding corner. Their wounding metal was curved like a giant insect. As they brought it toward me, I defecated. They aimed a finger’s length above my right nipple, and pressed it into my flesh. I could smell it burning. The pain ran through me like hot waves of lava. The people who had been pinning me down let me go. I could think only of heat, and of pain. I could not move. I opened my mouth, but no sound came. Finally, I heard a moan escape my lips. Arms around me. Another woman’s scream. And I was gone.

When I awoke, I was unsure how far the sun had moved in the sky, or if it had moved at all. Then I slept again. I thought I dreamed that Chekura was touching my hand. Big men were grabbing him, pinning him as he cried out in protest. When I awoke again, my chest was still burning. The heat twirled and danced under the ugly, raised welt on my chest. All the other women had the same welt.

I couldn’t sleep that night. When it began to rain, I stood. At least a good rainfall would clean me. I liked the cool water running down my face. It was good to see the mud sliding off my legs, but I cupped a hand over my raw wound to protect it. The rain felt soothing until the thunder rolled in and the lightning began lighting up the sky. Water fell on me
as if it were being dropped from a hundred buckets, and the thunder boomed in the night, echoing over and over again in the mountains. The rain kept up with such fierceness that I prayed for it not to sweep us all into the big river below. In the women’s pen, some twenty of us huddled together in the storm. I held Fanta with one hand, Sanu with the other. The noise was such that it drowned out the crying of Sanu’s baby. When the explosion from the clouds ceased, we found ourselves in a field of mud up to our ankles. We spent the whole night standing.